


Through Luna's Grace

by BurrSquee, Tikor



Series: Castebook: No Moon [2]
Category: Exalted
Genre: Gen, Lunars, POV First Person, Roleplaying Character, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-22 10:19:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13762032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurrSquee/pseuds/BurrSquee, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tikor/pseuds/Tikor
Summary: Herein are the stories of four No Moons as they are blessed by the Changing Lady.





	1. Through Luna's Grace: No Moon

Luna chooses her children for their originality, for their endurance, for their capacity for love. In her children who find their way to the No Moon Caste, it is often for the originality of their ideas, for their endurance in candlelit nights bent over tomes or tools, for their ability to see the beauty of Essence's weave and come to love Essence itself. Not that Luna knows the future, rather, she sees the chance for a human to grow into the No Moon Caste with a little help from her, and from the Silver Pact. It takes a village to educate a child, after all.


	2. Po

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Po grows distant from tribe and home.

**My Tribe, the So**  
I was born in the snow and white of the deepest North, near the tundra and sea which gave my tribe our livelihood. The land and sky were an enemy as deadly as any other, threatening lives and claiming limbs. From the deepest cold that would strip the breath from you, to the darkest of nights that would last for months and months, to the ferocious beasts that would always be on the hunt for you – living in this frozen desert was a struggle. In my tribe’s ranging-land, food and resources are scarce in good times and completely nonexistent in others. The darkness plays tricks on you, with lights seeming to pop up and lure you away, only to wink out as you get close. This land that does not care if its inhabitants live or die, for it will exist as long as the Elemental Pole of Air exists. You work as hard as you can, for as long as you can, and even then life is not a guarantee. Everything eventually freezes in the tundra.

Still, we continued on. My family and tribe remained as strong as we could. We fashioned our parkas and kamiks out of the hides and furs, rubbing oils into them to make them waterproof. With these, we could venture the coldest nights and stay warm despite the whipping wind. We carved seal oil lamps out of soapstone, ivory, or bone with the shapes of our gods upon them. Through the darkest of nights, those lamps burned and brought light to our hearths, sheltered from the desolate land, to keep our minds clear and free of roaming darkness. To combat the fauna of the land, we crafted harpoons and bows and great spears that could pierce the hides and furs of those that hunted us. With those same tools we hunted the smaller beasts in turn. We hunted for our needs and saved for leaner times, using all aspects of the animal. Nothing from a hunt was without use.

My people are one of community and tradition. We came together to provide and protect each other, and we came together to celebrate and entertain. Our tribe-god, Uvilia of the Melted Snow, was a common theme of stories around our campfires, when we had deadwood to burn. When we did not, we often spoke of the hardships our ancestors survived, like the five season winter survived by Anderfell the Thrifty or the mountain-high snowfall carved by Urson Snowhefter. We danced for births, marriages, and death; all of which made the great moments in our lives. We lived our lives together, among our people, close and involved.

I do not fit this mold.

I have always been one who enjoys being alone. Ever since I was a small child, I preferred solitude with my thoughts, rather than playing with the other children. They generally found me to be strange, as so felt best leaving me alone. Even during celebrations with food and laughter, I enjoyed staying on the outskirts, to learn and observe but never participate. This displeased my father and worried my mother. My grandmother would smile and pat me on my head while she continued to work, and I would help her. Oiling skins for garments and the coverings of qarmaqs, repairing nets for fishing and crabbing, and meat and fat storage for when the winter grew worse. These were the tasks I learned how to do at the hands of my grandmother. Sometimes I would find myself deep in my thoughts, and then my hands would still. “Your fingers are lost, Po,” she would say, never looking up from her own work. “Forgive me, Aanak,” I would say, the spell of my thoughts breaking and work beginning again. For there is always work to be done in the North. “What were you thinking of, little one?” she would ask, and I was never able to give her an answer. The thoughts always felt too big for words. “You will know in time,” my Aanak would say, “Just don’t forget to come back to us when you’re done wandering.” I never grew out of my moments of thought-wandering, but in my youth she was there to guide me back when my fingers got lost. It was easier with her, and I loved her dearly.

In time I found a use for my introspection. It started with a broken tanning frame. It had broken under my grandmother’s use, and afterwards she put it in my lap and said “What can be done with this?” It was a hard question, for it was one I had not previously thought of. But it didn’t take long, or long for me, to come up with a solution. With leather strips and a some thin pieces of bone, I repaired the frame. With a smile and a pat to my cheek, my grandmother got back to work. After that, net designs and construction, worn instruments, a crack in a canoe; these were all brought to me and were solved. Aanak was very pleased, and many people were happy, but others still thought I had become even stranger. What sort of craftsman was never an apprentice? The older workmen shunned my newfound skill, whispering that it was unnatural. 

As I grew older, my father decided that I needed to leave the “feeble example” of my grandmother’s tutelage. And so I got new tasks, none of which I was prepared for. My father attempted to teach me his skill, which was the hunting of the great white Nanuq. These great white bears are considered powerful and wise, for they are considered to be nearly human, and it is a tremendous honor to hunt them, a most spiritual of hunts. My father was considered the best hunter in the village, and hoped to pass it down to one of his children who would help the tribe by bringing back the Nanuq’s power and wisdom. This was meant to be the first hunt of many. I walked with my spear ready; I never intended to upset my father. But as I walked, I wandered more and more until I was eventually standing still. As my thoughts swirled around the concept of the worth of life - human or otherwise - I vividly remember hearing a shout behind me. Looking back, I could see my father rushing towards me through the snow, pointing his spear ahead of him. Turning back, I looked into the deep, black eyes of the bear we were hunting. I could feel the hot breath as the bear sniffed me over before making a sound I vaguely recall my grandmother making when displeased. My father’s spear missed; the bear turned and rushed off into the swirling white. 

My father was furious with me. He said I would never be as lucky as that if I lived till the end of the age. He predicted I would never make a hunter with my inward looking ways. One of his predictions came true. I never went on another hunt with my father again. But when Luna touched me, the other became as false as that great goddess’ face.

 **Exaltation**  
I didn’t stop hunting. It was the main way my people are fed out in the tundra, after all. When my father told the elders of our village about my disgrace with the Nanuq, they seemed to feel slightly differently. Obviously I must have some sympathy with the gods, or else I would never have been spared by such a wise being. In my head, I wondered if there were not easier ways to kill me. Hunting whales must have been the worst. We stood as a group on floats of pack ice, waiting for the pod to come by towards the shoals of small fish. I was grouped with someone more experienced than me, but close to my age. Perhaps it was thought I would be able to bond. But, yet again, my mind began to wander to thoughts of deeper things – questions whose importance, to me, overwhelmed my current task – and I was not prepared when the whales came. My comrade made a shout, which caused me to throw my harpoon prematurely. I must have alarmed the whale, for a great tale came out of the water and landed with a smack. The packed ice split and shattered, become smaller and less stable. Thankfully we were able to return to our village, but there was no whale to show for it that day.

I moved on to hunting smaller, less dangerous prey. Seals, and then foxes, and then the warmer weather birds. Eventually the elders decided that my skills did not lie in working with others, but working alone. I was told to sit by the abandoned air holes of the seals, and fish off the ice. It was work that was filled with solitude, which I did well at. And although I brought in less fish than others at the same task, I didn’t endanger anyone but myself.

And so this is how my life changed. I was fishing just before the long night would descend. It was colder than usual. Lost in my thoughts, absentmindedly tending to the line, I was not prepared for what happened next. It was important to get as much food as we could, before the hardest, coldest days came. But I hardly noticed the cold, as I was wrapped up in the questions one could ponder for a lifetime like if the Elemental Dragons made the world, who made them?. Questions of origins lead me to think on the influence of my people, and if I could ever think outside of their influence having known no other, a question I sometimes consider even now. But if I could not, if no one could not, from whence did new things come? So engrossed was I in this thought, that I didn’t notice my fingers lose their feeling or that I was no longer shivering. I had missed the rising of the moon, which was my signal to head home before dark, and the light was quickly fading. What I did notice was the shining white fur of the bear coming towards me. In all of my life among the snow, I had never seen something so pure and flawless. No hunter, not even my father, had returned with a Nanuq as beautiful as this. The moon itself rose from the fur of this majestic creature. By now, I couldn’t move. I watched the bear as it approached and stared at me. I figured I must be dying to imagine such a creature as this. For the second time in my life, I could feel the warm breath of the great bear. When it’s breath hit me, something powerful filled my body and mind. Images flashed before my eyes of great rooms, lands stranger than I could imagine, and images of myself that didn’t look like me. When I came back to myself, I saw the face of the bear close to my own. I held my breath as it moved closer, it’s large forehead pressing into my own, a crude greeting I would give to my mother or my beloved Aanak. I felt the strength of the bear as I breathed in with it, our lives and souls twisting together. When I opened my eyes, there was no sign of the shining bear, not even marks in the snow. As I moved forward, I stumbled – my body spilling onto the ice. When I attempted to right myself, I saw not the skin covered arms of a human, but the fur covered arms of the bear. I knew then that I could never return to the people of my birth. A Nanuq that wandered into the village would attract nothing but spears, foremost among them my father’s. I had so many questions. I set out to find the answers.


	3. Tikor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tikor attends the baron's feast, only to be thrown out as a dog.

**Matetha**  
So you want to hear an old story, then? I’ll oblige you. It was fifty years after the last case of the Contagion was recorded. The armies of Prince Balor were long gone. The Scarlet Empress was building the rubble of the Blessed Isle into an empire, but we hungry folk in the Hundred Kingdoms hadn’t paid much attention. My little kingdom, Matetha, wasn’t much more than a few stick huts held together with mud, but we all had big dreams. The old folks still remembered the gleaming cities and the efficient farms of the Era of Dreams. They’d tell us, the young ones, stories we couldn’t believe. Fresh fruit every day, even in the winter, and meat whenever you wanted it. No bandits, no mad Arczeckhi, rulers who fed the hungry and tended the wounded, and everyone had a warm place to sleep. You _telling_ the gods when to rain and where instead of praying and hoping. Never an earthquake that wasn’t planned in advance. Luna, it pains me that we’ve spent centuries and centuries failing to make a life as full for the common people as it was under the mad Solars. Fighting amongst each other, all working at our own projects, we’ve never come close.

At that year’s Contagion End feast, we’d had a good harvest. The first harvest of the year it was, in Ascending Wood. The farmers had brought in their leafy greens, their stored grain, and their roots. The ranchers their haunches, the shepherds their wool and mutton, and craftsmen of all kinds their cottage goods to trade to fill their empty larders. 

My contribution was to bring down what fowl I could for the cooks preparing the feasting table. I’d done a fair job, with three birds in hand for the feast. I’d found a flock on the water and been lucky with a hail of arrows. I’d never been very good with the bow, but it was the tool I had. I was still wet from swimming to get them, grinning at my success and ready for the meal. I’d fletch more arrows tomorrow. Today was for celebrating. 

My mother and father were at our tent. We’d come to the city for the feast, like all the folk around. The talk around camp had been about the stone keep being built by Baron Helmduth. At the time, he’d hired every mason or mason’s apprentice in the kingdom. The quarry had been working through the winter at great expense. It’s long since crumbled by now, but back then we all thought the baron was building a house for the ages. If I had remained mortal, it would have seemed that way all my life. A good many country folk were angling to find their way into the baron’s service - a place by the fire in that keep was a fair step up from a leaky wooden hut.

I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. I just wanted a full belly, some music, and a good laugh with a pretty girl. Being the son of a shepherd was dull to a man in his twentieth year. 

**Exaltation**  
As the afternoon wore on, we went into the city just like a whole stream of other folks. We paid one of my ducks and a bale of wool for the entrance tax, leaving plenty to trade. A butcher handed us a baron’s chit for two ducks, and the weaver twenty more for five bales of wool. This was long before the Dinar, mind you, and shortly before the Guild, too. The chit was just a pattern-burned piece of wood, easily forged, kept in value by the baron’s decree and the heavy punishment of forgers. We soon found our way through the crowd to a table set outdoors by one of the local breweries, and haggled our way into three seats for a single chit. 

The table had a wheat beer, beef strips slathered in sauce, and hard crust bread. We ate and we drank while my dad told the tale of his meeting my mother to a stranger, and my mother fussing for him to stop halfheartedly. Night fell and the music began to play. Once my head was pleasantly swimming, I gave up my seat to dance to the drummers and woodwinds. I don’t recall anymore what the young miss that I started the night of dancing with looked like, but in my dreams she’s always the prettiest I’d ever met in my young life. I’ll never forget the face of the second.

It was as I danced and sang along that another woman, cultured and fair, far beyond even my drunken state to dare approach, danced through the throng of us and grabbed my hand. She was so pale I thought she’d never seen the sun. In the night air her dark hair shone silver. For all her unpatched dress, well tailored with nary a single stain, she had a feral cast to her eyes. 

We swirled about in a step I’d never learned as she led me through its paces. I couldn’t look away from her silver eyes; she was captivating. She whispered stories to me, sung below her breath in time to the music, about the truclee of the moon, the tide of the Wyld, and the first eclipse where the moon blocked the sun. I laughed and smiled at her funny fantasy stories, lifting her by the waist in the step of our dance at their climaxes. I thought to myself that this feeling, surrounded by pleasant folk, meeting a stranger with so much to tell, and enjoying life was the point of living.

Then I was blinded by a flash of moonlight. The outline of the silver lady disappeared right while I was looking at her, the rest of her shortly after. At that point I could not ignore that something beyond the normal had happened. I looked around to see the country folk, merry just a moment before, stare down at me. I’m not a tall man, but to not be level with a single pair of eyes in a crowd is rare. I realized my hands were down on the stone road, so I raised them up and stood, but peculiarly couldn’t find my balance and found myself back down on all fours. 

Someone shouted, “Out, you Fae! Begone!” I tried to speak, but a dog barked over my every word. That shout and bark broke the spell, and I found myself shooed out of town with sticks and boots. My hands carried me faster than my feet ever had, but at the time I didn’t analyze; I just ran. I’d yet to understand my new condition. 

**The Pack**  
I was confused, but at least well fed, so I went loping out to the woods nearby before going back to my parent’s tent. I had the strange urge to lick my wounds, and absentmindedly did so while I wondered just what had just happened. I was interrupted by the silent approach of a lion who turned into a man just before me. He said to me, “Leave it to Luna to bless a dog.” I barked at the man, attempting to say, “Who are you?” Somehow, he understood me. “I am Sha’a Oka,“ he said, “And I am here to retrieve you.”


	4. Raksi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raksi, unmoored to her rapid-fire cultures, learns she does not need them.

**The Standards of My Youth**  
I grew up not far from here. Not far in distance, anyway. My father was the senior physician at the Curative Capsulary College. He was fiercely proud of his position, being _only_ Dragon-Blooded, as many of his peers would say outside of his hearing. My mother was either a member or the leader of a special forces unit under the Deliberative Sentinel Forces, it was never really clear to my childhood self. She left before I could remember her, and her location was classified, so I never spoke with her. I was raised, mostly, by my nurse Tofika.

Tofika was a Dragon-King, and she had a talent for children. I felt like her attention was worth more than anyone else’s. I constantly preened for her, shouting for her eyes to fall upon my childish accomplishments. Her reptilian features shifted to a human-like approximation of appreciation when I did so, and she was quick to compliment my efforts. Somehow she coaxed good behavior out of me without ever striking me. Someone must have threatened her terribly, for I often tested her patience. 

The other Dragon-Blooded-to-be, children of noble lines, were my peers, for in those days there was a greater expectation of taking the second breath among the Dragon’s children. Most were the offspring of scholars of Sperimin, and hoped fiercely for the Elemental Dragon of Air to touch them in their early teens so they could master occult lore and the languages needed to read it with supernatural ease. I wanted to become a Dragon-King, I recall proudly declaring, and to watch over children when I grew up. I was roundly mocked for that aspiration.

My father had other plans for my life. He expected me to learn how to ‘patch people up instead of slicing them apart’ as he would phrase it. I was forbidden any training with weapons or in the martial arts. Sporadically, when his busy schedule allowed, he would tutor me in the study of medicine. He would have me memorize anatomy with songs and rhymes. He would recite common courses of common diseases, and the best-known treatments for them. I strived to be worthy of his attention. However, for a small child who had not known sickness herself, much of his medical lore was hard to retain. When I would take too long to remember or answer incorrectly, he would rap my knuckles with a flick of his wood-hard fingers. He told me that these hurts would be much less than what my patients would feel if I could not remember what was required to ease their suffering. No one batted an eye at this, least of all my nurse Tofika. The Dragon-Kings kill their young who do not learn enough, soon enough, sparing Creation from feeding a dangerous, ravenous monster, hoping they will improve in their next incarnation. Sometimes I think my father’s attitudes on punishment and learning came directly from Tofika herself, then amplified by the local culture.

Everyone in my prefecture was expected to be a savant, you see. Living in the unrivaled center of learning that was Spearmin, it was your patriotic duty, though few described it so simply. Rather, if you could not bring forward relevant evidence to craft logically sound arguments in impromptu debates, you were seen as a dullard. So a broad knowledge base and a deep specialty was required for any sort of social status higher than village idiot.

 **Condescended by my Peers**  
I strived to be knowledgeable, to be liked. But my peers who did not have a talent for study compensated by developing their talent for shutting up those smarter than they. I still hear them, in quiet times, laughing at me like humans crossed with monkeys. I used to lash out at my children, thinking they were the ones responsible for dredging up the past with their cackling, but now I have determined that it is some ghost of the mind that haunts me. 

I recall sitting in lecture for Introduction to Geomancy, and sitting near was Vagyn Xiao, that entitled little shit. He was always so sure of his Exaltation. He’d talk about his line, how none within it were mortal to anyone who listened. And in that class, many did. He made it his mission to research anyone’s family who he didn’t like. My maternal grandfather’s mother was mortal with no marriage connections recorded by I AM, apparently a tryst out of wedlock. Xiao made sure everyone knew it.

But I did not have to suffer him long. Before the semester was out, my life changed forever.

 **Touched by Luna**  
In the midst of classes that I had no right to expect would end for decades yet, Luna came to steal me from the Dragons whose second breath I thought I was destined for. Such is her right, to push the predetermined into the unknown. I was a child when I inhaled the Second Breath, only 13. My first nickname among the Exalted was ‘The Child Raksi’. The scene was unexpected, befitting the Changing Lady. Luna was silent about it, mischievously mysterious, now that I recall the memory. She sauntered up to me in the library, walking on air. When I noticed her, I looked up from my tome. She cupped my young face, kissed my lips, then disappeared.

I was swept off to Meru. The majordomo of my inherited territory asked when I would like to hold my debutante feast. Even then I had a talent, a taste for vengeance. I told him the date of Sperimin’s graduation. To those in Meru it was no great day, but to my father, he would have to choose his school or me. I knew he would lose status with one faction or another no matter which event he chose to attend. In the end, he did not refuse me. 

My Solar mate did, however. I met all the luminaries of the Deliberative while he was away on spiritual retreat. I learned his name, Righteous Guide, and that he was of the Zenith Caste, and that his majordomo, Hue Machee, made a name for herself as the Dragon-Blooded voting in his place while his Lunar mate reincarnated. Machee and I hated each other immediately. She made it quite clear she would not give up her position without a fight; she’d been preparing favors for just such a power struggle for a decade. I made it clear that I would not challenge her, that politics bored me and there were much more noble pursuits for my genius. 

Regarding my mother, I set the military members of my new administration hunting for her. I really think I could have found her had I had a few more years to look. But even then a Dragon-Blooded conspiracy was disappearing talented military personnel and material. My status as a beloved Celestial of Creation was not to last. The Usurpation was just around the corner. I now suspect my mother was part of the forces marshaled to overthrow the Deliberative and establish the Shogunate, player her small soldier's part in killing hundreds of my peers the night of the purge.

 **Set Free by the Wyld**  
I was off studying the Jade Obelisks at the edge of Creation when I noticed my guard contingent of automata fail. An army looked to be forming up, but not to relieve the machines of their guard duty. They didn’t look friendly. My personal guards with souls of their own caught the feeling in the air first. Lovely Oasha bid me take half of her guard, just five souls, with me and flee while she parlayed with the hostile forces. So I did the smartest thing I’d ever done, I fled into the Wyld. Away from my family, away from Meru and its wonders, away from Creation. I never saw Oasha again.

The Wyld showed me how little the trappings of my childhood mattered. People who would only abandon you. Things that would only decay or be destroyed. In the Wyld, my world was my own to create from my will. Out there surrounded by pure possibility… the experience showed me what horrors were grown by the neglect of those whose melancholy robbed them of action and tainted their surroundings. It showed me the wonders of well-kept dreams, cultivated by a steady hand. Chief among them was Baron von Arbor, whose court I swept into on the tide of the Wyld.

He kindly took me in, sheltering me from the horrors the Wyld saw fit to show me. All he asked at first was the small price of my mortal guards. They were starving and mad by then, so I gladly agreed. 

At first the Wyld alternated between utopia and dystopia to my young eyes. Lovers coalesced in sinful form from daydreams to give any pleasure I desired. Nightmares, voices, hounded me with my own insecurities of ostracization, or loneliness, of low standing. But the good Baron taught me how to steady my mind through a Heart Grace he tore from his fallen-from-favor courtier and grafted to my soul. He showed me his bonefire, his life’s work in the waypoint he called the Delightful Surprise where he held court, which he had shaped to defy his expectations, to sate his unending thirst for novelty. Later, he tried to slit my throat in my sleep, but the sentimental fool couldn't keep his mirth to himself. His cackling woke me and I slew him instead. With the power vacuum I created in my act of self-defense, the rest of the court would either try to kill me immediately, or bow to me then try to kill me later. I didn’t like my chances against them all, so I fled again. But I still think of the late Baron fondly whenever my second heart pulses with Wyld energy. 

When I rejoined my brethren of the Silver Pact I saw them for what they were - powerful fools fit for little else than dancing for my amusement. I have cast most all of them out of my waking dreams by now. But back then, they were much more ancient than I. They needed handled with the care that any intelligent soul must treat great wild beasts. They had formed a pack against the Shogunate’s hunting parties. I needed to ingratiate myself with them to keep the Sidereals from singling me out now that I tipped my toes back into Creation. They were suspicious of the gifts the Wyld had bestowed upon me, my joints and my teeth, though I never let any look deeply into my altered soul. So I set to work making a ritual to hold the Wyld’s touch at bay using all I’d learned by coming of age in chaos. I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.


	5. The Marked Wolf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The woman before the wolf, withering under the sun's light.

**The Woman Before the Wolf**  
I was touched by Luna in a time that does not resemble this one in ways large and small for a reason that no longer matters. That story has no use now. Let me tell you a different one.

Shortly before the wolf, a mortal woman lived her life in the sun of the golden ones. They told her where she would attend schooling, they told her how she was to pray, they told where she was to work, they told her how she was to _think_ , who she was to _be_. They shaped her destiny and the destinies of all around her. To the woman it was stifling. To the masses it was utopia.

This woman, willful as she was, tried to choose differently for herself. She resisted their propaganda, thier dogma, their plans for her. This landed the woman in trouble with her rulers time and again. But the golden ones of old were filled with hubris even in their mercy. They did not kill her for making trouble like the rulers of the Second Age might attempt, she was simply too small for them to notice personally. Instead, their great bureaucracy tried to reform her.

Mandatory classes for civility were her sentence, her prison. The hierarchy was explained to her again and again until her nightmares were haunted by the monotone of the lecturer. _This is the way of the world_ , they said. _It will never be any other way_ , they said. Ah, but they are all dead now. It brings a smile to my whiskers, so I will not dwell on them any longer.

Upon release, the woman before the wolf travelled all of Creation. She learned that each Solar, in each of their own corners of Creation had a different law that they gave to their subjects. These lawgivers each claimed to know the true, shining path. Yet, each one was different. In her home prefecture kindness and gentleness were mandatory. In another, preparing for war was the highest virtue. In yet another, the pursuit of knowledge took precedence. Prosperity and fair dealing were held high in the fourth such she visited. Confusingly, forging your own path was the expectation of the fifth. How could each of these paths, with their conflicting priorities, all be as true as the golden ones claimed? 

Late in her life, the woman before the wolf suspected that they _could not_ be all true. That the rigid paths set forth for mortals to lead their lives were nothing other than the fancy of distant rulers forcing their subjects to march a step that often did not fit their legs. 

So the woman before the wolf rejected their stories, earned the attention of the Fickle Lady, and became a wolf such as you, through the light of Luna’s grace.


End file.
